Getting the blues over something red.

My quest for a Vermilion Cloak continues...

Sadly, this quest of mine has taught me a lot about the current inflation trend. I finally scraped together 12 million gil (the last known price of the v.cloak at the time) and went to the AH, mentally prepared to spend a ton of gil on a red hoodie with a Refresh effect.

14 million?!

That was fast... In fact, it was less than 24 hours! A 2 million gil price jump... Back to farming gil. Sigh...

This isn't limited to the Vermilion Cloak. Every piece of common "uber" gear is seeing a radical jump in price this month. Everyone has their theory on the cause. Gil seller sites are dumping inventory, people are home for the holidays and want to play more, SE nerfed drop rates, ect... Only the first one has any tangible evidence, though...

Now I don't really blame it on any of those. They might contribute to things, but the real cause is idiot, impatient, gotta-have-it-now-now-now, rich morons!! For chrissakes, people! The AH kicks unsold items back after only THREE days! Only a masochistic crafter would keep relisting something at a higher price thanks to the huge tax involved! Not only that, but the HQ of the Vermilion Cloak, the Royal Cloak, is only 1 million gil more than the current NQ price! THINK about this!!

*pant-pant*

Of course, part of the cause for rising armor costs is that the cost of materials used to make them are also rising. This one has a simple solution that not many would be willing to execute. Over-farm the key materials! Undercut, but not a lot, when you list them on the AH! Undercut too much, and someone will just buy them up and relist them at a higher price.

In fact, this is the normal pattern of things. Price explodes on Item-X, profit-minded people start farming Item-X like mad. AH is flooded with tons of Item-X's and after 3 days, some get kicked back. People relist Item-X at a lower price to get the gil back as fast as possible. Price of Item-X nosedives. Problem is, gil buying creates people who do not have to farm. So supplies stay low and prices creep ever-upward.

It falls on us, the honest players, to fix the mess.

...Anyone have a cheap Vermilion Cloak for sale?

Oh, and Merry Christmas! And just to annoy Bill O'Reilly, Happy Holidays!

EDIT: Just thought of something else... The game should be able to detect when a particular item is running low at the AH and automatically increase the drop rate of that item slightly to compensate. When the AH is flooded with a particular item, the drop rate should automatically be slightly reduced. No need for artificial "price caps" at the AH and no obvious nerf to piss off the crafters. Best of all, if it's designed properly, it'll be utterly transparent.